TECHNOLOGY

High-speed trains open materials skirmish No revolution, but some changes in materials will

result from noise and vibration inherent at high speeds

High-speed intercity transit systems designed to relieve some of the trans­portation problems in the U.S. are be­ginning to move off the drawing boards and onto the tracks. At the same time, suppliers are maneuvering to provide the materials needed for building the high-speed trains and roadbeds and for abating the noise in­herent at high speeds. Shaping up as a particularly hot contest is the battle between aluminum and steel for car bodies.

Contracts have already been let for two high-speed train systems in the Boston-Washington Northeast corri­dor—a congested area where 20% of the U.S. population is currently con­centrated. Pennsylvania Railroad has ordered 50 stainless steel passenger rail cars for service between New York City and Washington. And United Aircraft's corporate systems center in Farmington, Conn., has designed and is directing the building of two gas tur­bine propelled, aluminum passenger trains. (In addition, United Aircraft has just concluded an agreement with Canadian National Railways for five seven-car units.)

The Pennsy system is scheduled to make test runs at up to 110 miles per hour by October 1967. The trains are intended for operation ultimately at up to 150 miles per hour. United Aircraft's trains are designed for an ultimate 160 miles per hour. They're scheduled for test runs late this year and for passenger demonstration runs in 1967 on the New Haven railroad between Boston and Providence. Cur­rently, trains are limited to normal maximum speeds of about 80 to 90 miles per hour.

More than the Pennsy and United Aircraft systems are involved in high­speed schemes, however. At least 30 metropolitan areas are likely to build new intracity transit systems by the end of the century. Rail transporta­tion thus represents a significant if not huge market for many materials. Al­coa, for example, estimates that by 1980, transit systems already in the planning stage could consume 82.5 million pounds of aluminum in an es­timated 7500 passenger cars.

All told, the emphasis on new ground transportation design stands as a gain for all materials suppliers. But

many will benefit from a companion trend as well. Testing of various transportation system components and letting of contracts for specific designs have undergone a complete reversal from the way railcar orders were placed as little as five years ago.

Previously, the car builder decided how to build, and that was that. Now, transportation authorities and govern­ment agencies (such as the Depart­ment of Commerce's Office of High Speed Ground Transportation) spec­ify what they want, and car builders submit bids. As a result, the trans­portation materials battle has reopened and the chances of something new be­ing accepted have been greatly en­hanced.

Design change. For the present, though, the most obvious change con­nected with high-speed trains is in de­sign—structural and decorative. The Pennsy and United Aircraft designs, for example, borrow heavily from off-the-shelf technology developed in the aircraft and other industries. And, as with design, choices of materials will be made for many reasons other than those directly attributable to high

U.S. designers explore new techniques for use in high-speed ground transportation

WHEEL John J. Mede, of Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton's Standard Steel di­vision, explains the company's noise-reducing, aluminum-center wheel design to R. K. Hildebrandt (center) and J. Reigle, both of Standard

BODY. This all-steel sandwich panel with an egg-crate core is U.S. Steel's approach to lightweight structural panels

60 C&EN JUNE 6, 1966

HIGHSPEED. A Japanese National Railway high-speed train, one of the first in the world, moves into Tokyo station at the end of a 125 mile-per-hour run f rom Osaka. The JNR system has been scrutinized closely by U.S. designers as they plan for high-speed trains in the U.S.

speed. Weight, cost, maintenance, and appearance are all factors. Major innovations in materials await much higher speeds than those currently an­ticipated.

Nonetheless, there are a number of subtle changes that will be caused by the current move to higher speeds. These arise from the increase in noise level as well as greater motion, vibra­tion, and shock strains on both vehi­cles and roadway.

In surveying high-speed technology, designers can look outside the U.S. to other countries which have led the way in developing high-speed transit systems. The Japanese National Rail­road (JNR) is routinely operating trains at 125 miles per hour between Osaka and Tokyo, and speeds of 160 miles per hour have been achieved.

France and West Germany have also built and are operating high-speed trains at more than 125 miles per hour. It's the Japanese system, however, with its conventional technology but meticulous attention to detail that has received the closest scrutiny by U.S. designers.

JNR carried out a series of strength tests on the car underframe to reduce the weight of the stainless steel vehi­cles. As a result, the car underframe was designed without a full-length center sill. Side beams and cross beams are welded together and formed in the shape of a ladder by a channel between front and rear bolster beams. This gives a car with strength com­parable to conventional design but 7% lighter. Another 1% weight reduction was achieved by distributing the

power package over two paired units. Other subtle but significant vehicle

changes include: • Pantograph contact strips of a sin­

tered copper powder alloy (contain­ing small amounts of tin, iron, and graphite) that last longer than copper or carbon strips.

• Propulsion motor windings filled with epoxy resins to improve heat transfer.

• Inflated neoprene seals around doors to stop air entry at high speeds.

• Urethane foam as a sound insulat­ing material on floor and side walls of the car body.

Several significant changes were also made in the roadway built for the trains. JNR went to the American gage of 4 feet, 8 inches (from the Japanese standard of 3 feet, 6 inches) and to continuously welded, induction-hardened rails. Rail ties are made of prestressed and posttensioned con­crete, spaced on about 24-inch cen­ters (standard spacing for wooden ties is 18 inches ) .

The concrete tie offers a more se­cure fastening of the rail to the tie, and the greater weight of the tie imparts

SUPPORT. A neoprene bearing pad goes into place between concrete foundation and steel piers that support the Port Authority of Allegheny County's elevated transit project

RAIL. A worker inserts a rail assembly for an a.c. contact rail system into a polyethylene extrusion. The extrusion, developed by Plastex Co., provides support and insulat ion

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greater stability against buckling. But noise level dictates the use of elasto-meric pads (neoprene by JNR) be­tween rail and tie.

Construction better. Concrete ties won't be needed on the Boston-Wash­ington Northeast corridor. U.S. road­beds have a better construction than previous Japanese roadbeds. U.S. rail is also heavier—150-pound test, com­pared to JNR's 100-pound test.

The Pennsylvania Railroad will, however, also require a new type of pantograph contact strip. A low-car­bon steel filled with graphite has shown the most promise so far, with a life of 7000 to 8000 miles in tests con­ducted by the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Co. By comparison, the standard copper-bearing steel has a life of 500 to 600 miles between re­newals at the same test speed.

Pennsy has also specified that all elastomeric parts used in its railcars be neoprene. Areas where it will be used include truck bumpers and snub-bers, window seals, door weather strip­ping, and for cushioning and sound abatement on metal parts.

Materials differ. United Aircraft and Pennsy railcars offer several con­trasts in design and in materials of con­struction. Aircraft design features, for example, are apparent in several com­ponents of the United Aircraft cars. The exterior shape, which is nearly circular, resembles an airplane fuse­lage and has an aerodynamically de­signed, glass fiber-reinforced plastic nose. A single-axle suspension system places the mounting point of the car above the car's center of gravity and permits the body to bank like an air­plane when rounding curves at high speeds. The company bought a pat­ent for the suspension system from an earlier proponent—the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co. Recently it re­ceived additional patents on its own improved version.

As speed increases, weight becomes important, because the greater the weight the more power required for acceleration and the more braking ca­pacity needed. For this reason, many designers favor aluminum over stain­less steel for transportation concepts involving speeds above 160 miles per hour.

United Aircraft emphasizes the lighter weight of aluminum and notes that one of its three-car units weighs 69.3 tons (seating 156). Some sav­ings in weight is achieved, United Air­craft says, by equipping only the first and last cars of a train unit with the turbomechanical engine.

Pennsy emphasizes the fatigue re­sistance and low maintenance charac­teristics of the high-nickel stainless steels. Two of its self-motive cars (seating 160) weigh 140 tons.

The Pennsy railcar uses the conven­tional double-axle air suspension sys­tem and a wider modified version of the basic body style common to con­ventional passenger railcars. Like United Aircraft, however, Pennsy plans to use a molded glass fiber-rein­forced plastic nose. The reinforced plastic nose offers freedom in aerody­namic design, and colors are available which match very closely with stain­less steel.

One company which is seeking through design technique to improve steel's competitive position for the high-speed market is U.S. Steel. Its steel car of tomorrow (SCOT) achieves a high strength-to-weight ra­tio through use of two epoxy-bonded steel sheets separated with an egg-crate construction. The sandwich panel was developed by the American Bridge Division of U.S. Steel to meet military specifications for portable air­craft landing fields.

American Cyanamid has been dem­onstrating specialty laminates with controlled vibration dampening prop­erties. The company laminates simi­lar or dissimilar metals, such as alu­minum, steel, and brass, one to another. This way, the company says, expensive and inexpensive materials can be used together to give rigidity and design flexibility at a lower cost.

One area where designers of both steel and aluminum cars are in agree­ment is in upgrading the car interior. Pennsy will carpet the bottom, sides, and tops of its oars. Each car will use about 750 sq. ft. of Allied's Caprolan nylon pile carpeting. Carpeting, Pennsy points out, is easy to maintain and reduces interior noise radiation. United Aircraft may not carpet as heavily but will add drapes.

Reducing noise and vibration within the cars and along the rail line are im­portant factors in gaining public ac­ceptance of the high-speed trains. The major source of noise is that of the wheels on the rail.

Wheel suggested. One suggested solution to this problem is an alumi­num-centered steel wheel. The Standard Steel division of Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton has a wheel it calls Acoustaflex, which uses a polyure-thane adhesive to bond the aluminum to the steel. This breaks the path of vibration transmission and reduces ra­diated noise to about 7 decibels (from 97 for a conventional steel wheel). There is also a weight reduction of up to 300 pounds per wheel.

Edgewater Steel also manufactures an aluminum-centered wheel. Edge-water uses contoured aluminum forg-ings which are machined, heat treated, and compressed into the steel tire.

Another approach to sound abate­ment is the use of coatings on the in-

62 C&EN JUNE 6, 1966

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side of the wheel, on the rail, and on the interior of the car body to inhibit the sound radiators from acting as such. A test program conducted by B. F. Goodrich has used various elas­tomer coatings on both rail and wheel.

Matted glass fiber applied to the in­terior of the car body has proved ef­fective in absorbing vibrational en­ergy. Glass fiber and polyurethane foam will both be used by the high­speed trains for sound baffling and for heat insulation.

Noise investigated. A number of roadway construction developments also center around noise reduction. Several intracity rapid transit projects have investigated noise abatement pro­cedures which may eventually find their way into the high-speed railroad construction.

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BARTD), which has yet to decide between aluminum or steel rail cars, is looking into concrete ties, which would be separated from the rails by neoprene pads. No evi­dence, though, is yet available to show that the concrete tie has a longer life than wood. This would be necessary, BARTD notes, to justify the $14 per tie and $7.00 for the neoprene pad, compared to $6.00 for a wooden tie.

A high-density polyethylene is being used in the support, insulation, and protection of a third rail system under­going tests by BARTD. The polyeth­ylene insulator shield is the first major product to be fabricated from a new Du Pont polyethylene resin—Alathon 7023 BK30. The 20-foot-long, 20-inch-wide shield is the largest poly­ethylene extrusion ever fabricated, ac­cording to its developer, Plastex Co. (a division of Sohio Chemical). The flexibility of the extruded polyethyl­ene shield permits the electric contact line to rise and fall with the roadbed and to adapt to horizontal curves by moving in or out as vehicles pass.

BARTD is testing a number of other chemical materials for possible use in its intracity system. Some of these:

• Teflon and nylon on certain bear­ings.

• Fire-retardant additives in car in­teriors, upholstry, and padding.

• Hydraulic brake and suspension systems with attendant fluids.

• Adhesives to bond the metal skin of a car to the structural frame.

•Acrylic coatings for car exteriors. Across the country, the Port Author­

ity of Allegheny County (in Pennsyl­vania) has a full-scale prototype of an electric railbus built by Westinghouse. Westinghouse is using neoprene pads between the concrete foundations and the steel piers of the elevated struc­ture. On four of the piers, a Teflon bearing pad is being tested between the pier and the superstructure.

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JUNE 6, 1966 C&EN 63